Donald J. Duterte – A Tyrant is a Tyrant is a Tyrant

The Philippines recently elected a new president in a landslide, and if you want to know what a Trump presidency would look like, then this is it. Duterte is a tyrant in the making – another Ferdinand Marcos (indeed he intends to have a new funeral with full honors for the former brutal and long-disgraced dictator).

Agence France-Presse quotes one of Duterte’s many outbursts:

“Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Duterte said when asked how he would address the problem of media killings in the Philippines after a reporter was shot dead in Manila last week.

The Philippines is one of the most dangerous nations in the world for journalists, with 174 murdered since a chaotic and corruption-plagued democracy replaced the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos three decades ago.

“Most of those killed, to be frank, have done something. You won’t be killed if you don’t do anything wrong,” Duterte said

Now think of the words used by Trump in yesterday’s press conference and many others for that matter. He has called reporters slime, sleaze, dishonest, and so on.

On February 26, Trump said he would take aim at reporters if elected by weakening first amendment protections to make it easier for politicians to sue them. Apparently not knowing that it would take a constitutional amendment to do anything to our most cherished in the Bill of Rights, he shows his hand.

Trump doesn’t like being questioned. He calls himself a counter-puncher, and that’s fine. But getting one’s knickers in a twist when one doesn’t like certain questions and resorting to preschool name-calling is not counter-punching. It’s being a spoiled brat.

This man should scare every single lover of liberty in this country. But many seem to be willing to put on the sheep’s wool.